Silence at work - rememberance

Wait... People are condoning those who are unwilling to give up a measly two minutes of their lives every year to remember those that died fighting to get/protect the freedoms they now so obnoxiously take for granted?

What the hell happened, OcUK?

For the nth time, not observing the silence does not equate with you not caring. Nor do I think there is a right or wrong answer to whether you should observe it. I think it is unreasonable of people to equate not observing it with some sort of emotional immaturity when there could be any number of reasons why people choose not to.

Of course, going up to someone who is observing the silence and going "U WOT m8?" as someone appears to have done in this thread is indeed the height of ignorance. Making the decision to go about your normal day-to-day activities when the silence is going on is not.

My position on this moving forward is that I will continue to donate to the Poppy Appeal and I will continue to pay my respects as I see fit. I feel the obligation to conform to Remembrance Day celebrations is no so overwhelmingly oppressive that it has essentially lost all meaning, examples including:

-Google being berated for only displaying a small poppy on their front page (I thought this was an appropriate understated tribute)
-People appearing on the TV being almost forced to wear a poppy and complaints being made if they do not
-Football clubs having to apologise for not holding a silence despite having poppies on the shirts and donating to the Appeal

I also do not think it is appropriate that current serving armed forces are increasingly being involved and "celebrated" during the day as I hugely respect the sacrifices made in the past but am deeply uncomfortable about our role in wars around the world. I am also concerned about the Jubilee-esque plans in place for the WW1 centenary next year and turning what should be a sombre and reflective occasion into a year of triumphalism.

Ultimately I feel that holding these events while we continue to waste life around the world shows that we have learned nothing and pay lip service to it at best.
 
I find this, along with comic relief and all the other similar things an excuse, nothing more or less. We fight wars of greed and terror against other countries, but we're moral and good because this 2 minutes a year we're quiet and pretend to honour the dead. No you can't be part of a society in which you do nothing to stop your own military oppressing other people in the world while honouring the people who died preventing just such a military doing exactly the same thing.

It's like charity, have one big event once a year then everyone can give a fiver and release their conscience about it, "I gave £20 on comic relief therefore I'm moral and don't have to think about the people in china dying to mine coal to feed the power stations that run the plants where slave labour makes the crap I want to buy for cheap".

It's a get out clause, I'm moral because I pay the guilt relief fee on the day I'm supposed to pay the guilt relief fee and I don't have to think about how much the rest of the world suffers the other 364 days a year.

I don't have to constantly think about the disgusting way we completely dishonour the brave sacrifice our soldiers made in two world wars by having our current army wage wars of aggression for greed and power... because I think about them for 2 minutes a year?

I find these things embarrassing, it's not that it wouldn't be a bad thing IF we didn't completely dishonour these things the other 364 days and 1438 minutes of the year. It's completely ridiculous. I don't need a semi enforced 2 minutes in a year to think about the brave things people have done, I can think about that, and do think about it a hell of a lot more often.

I find things like the 2 minutes silence a wilfully ignorant agreement to ignore the bad crap we do the rest of the time. Ignoring the crap for 364 days and 1438 minutes a year because we can remember the last good thing we did for the world that many years ago... it's embarrassing, disingenuous, self congratulating, dishonourable and simply ridiculous.

Our country currently kills scores of people, pretty much every day, in wars of aggression...... we've done this for the past decade non stop..... the very kind of oppression we used to fight and now partake in willingly. But we're quiet for 2 minutes a year so it's ok.

Best post in the thread.
 
Yeah, I'm sure they'd be jumping for joy to know that they died to protect those arrogant and obnoxious enough to not even spare two minutes just to say "Thanks." What a sterling argument you provide.
So just to confirm, you think it is wrong for people to choose by using their freedoms of speech and expression not to stay silent for two five-hundred-thousandths of the year.

But you think it is right to tell people they are 'ignorant', 'obnoxious' and wrong for wanting to do so.

You seem to think that you are taking the moral high ground here but you're doing the exact opposite.

What these people do for two measly minutes of the year is absolutely inconsequential to how they spend the rest of their year and what they do throughout it.
 
Excellent article in The Guardian from a veteran:

This year, I will wear a poppy for the last time

Over the last 10 years the sepia tone of November has become blood-soaked with paper poppies festooning the lapels of our politicians, newsreaders and business leaders. The most fortunate in our society have turned the solemnity of remembrance for fallen soldiers in ancient wars into a justification for our most recent armed conflicts. The American civil war's General Sherman once said that "war is hell", but unfortunately today's politicians in Britain use past wars to bolster our flagging belief in national austerity or to compel us to surrender our rights as citizens, in the name of the public good.

Still, this year I shall wear the poppy as I have done for many years. I wear it because I am from that last generation who remember a war that encompassed the entire world. I wear the poppy because I can recall when Britain was actually threatened with a real invasion and how its citizens stood at the ready to defend her shores. But most importantly, I wear the poppy to commemorate those of my childhood friends and comrades who did not survive the second world war and those who came home physically and emotionally wounded from horrific battles that no poet or journalist could describe.

However, I am afraid it will be the last time that I will bear witness to those soldiers, airmen and sailors who are no more, at my local cenotaph. From now on, I will lament their passing in private because my despair is for those who live in this present world. I will no longer allow my obligation as a veteran to remember those who died in the great wars to be co-opted by current or former politicians to justify our folly in Iraq, our morally dubious war on terror and our elimination of one's right to privacy.

Come 2014 when the government marks the beginning of the first world war with quotes from Rupert Brooke, Rudyard Kipling and other great jingoists from our past empire, I will declare myself a conscientious objector. We must remember that the historical past of this country is not like an episode of Downton Abbey where the rich are portrayed as thoughtful, benevolent masters to poor folk who need the guiding hand of the ruling classes to live a proper life.

I can tell you it didn't happen that way because I was born nine years after the first world war began. I can attest that life for most people was spent in abject poverty where one laboured under brutal working conditions for little pay and lived in houses not fit to kennel a dog today. We must remember that the war was fought by the working classes who comprised 80% of Britain's population in 1913.

This is why I find that the government's intention to spend £50m to dress the slaughter of close to a million British soldiers in the 1914-18 conflict as a fight for freedom and democracy profane. Too many of the dead, from that horrendous war, didn't know real freedom because they were poor and were never truly represented by their members of parliament.

My uncle and many of my relatives died in that war and they weren't officers or NCOs; they were simple Tommies. They were like the hundreds of thousands of other boys who were sent to their slaughter by a government that didn't care to represent their citizens if they were working poor and under-educated. My family members took the king's shilling because they had little choice, whereas many others from similar economic backgrounds were strong-armed into enlisting by war propaganda or press-ganged into military service by their employers.

For many of you 1914 probably seems like a long time ago but I'll be 91 next year, so it feels recent. Today, we have allowed monolithic corporate institutions to set our national agenda. We have allowed vitriol to replace earnest debate and we have somehow deluded ourselves into thinking that wealth is wisdom. But by far the worst error we have made as a people is to think ourselves as taxpayers first and citizens second.

Next year, I won't wear the poppy but I will until my last breath remember the past and the struggles my generation made to build this country into a civilised state for the working and middle classes. If we are to survive as a progressive nation we have to start tending to our living because the wounded: our poor, our underemployed youth, our hard-pressed middle class and our struggling seniors shouldn't be left to die on the battleground of modern life.
 
i was in a pensions meeting and when they sounded a site alarm to sound the start of the minuite silence they guy who was running it just came out with "well thats the sound to start the silence does anyone actually want to honur the silence or should i continue?"

im guessing by a few looks around the room the took the message and shut up... im not too fussed myself but do it out of respect of other people wanting to partake.
 
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